Facebook to Change Its Name to Reflect Focus on the Metaverse

Bradley Rhodes -

Citing sources, The Verge reports that Facebook is planning to change its company name to stop being associated exclusively with the social media platform of the same name and reflect the focus on the entire metaverse of its products, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg plans to discuss the upcoming rebranding at the annual Facebook Connect event on October 28.

The new name is strictly confidential, and not even all members of the top management know it. Some say the new name may refer to Horizon, a virtual meeting space that you can connect to with a VR headset or from your regular computer via a video call. The company unveiled it in August.

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Over the past few years, the company has been actively investing in augmented and virtual reality technologies. In 2019, it acquired VR headset developer Oculus for $2 billion. In September of the same year, Facebook announced its intention to create Horizon.

Zuckerberg announced plans to create a metaverse back in July. According to the plan, the metaverse is an online world where people will interact with each other using augmented and virtual reality even if they are far away from each other. In a virtual space, people can meet each other using virtual reality glasses, which are believed to be as common in the future as smartphones.

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Facebook also plans to create 10,000 new jobs in the European Union within 5 years to develop its metaverse. The company expects this innovation to help Internet users better experience real-world interactions with others. According to Facebook, the metaverse will foster new creative, social, and economic opportunities.

Facebook is not the first high-profile tech company to change its name as it expands. In 2015, Google was reorganized into the Alphabet holding since it was no longer just a search engine but a conglomerate of companies that produce various products.